Frank handed him his pack.
“Been trying to quit, but I can’t,” Jameson said. He lit a cigarette. “You know, I’ve always been interested in cops.” He lifted his hand up near Frank’s face then slowly made a fist. “It’s sort of a hands-on profession, don’t you think?”
Frank jotted down a few of the things Jameson had already told him.
“Not exactly Sherlock Holmes, are you?” Jameson asked haughtily.
Frank ignored him.
“I thought of writing a mystery once,” Jameson said. “A sort of parody, you might say, I was going to call it ‘The Deductive Detective.’”
Frank looked up. “Do you have a copy of the play?”
Jameson smiled happily. “Yes, since I wrote it. It’s an adaptation from mythological sources. I have copies of it at home. I could send you one.”
Frank handed him one of his cards. “Send it to me at that address,” he said.
“Happy to,” Jameson said. “I hope you find it interesting.”
Frank glanced back down at his notebook. “How many other people were in the cast?”
“Five,” Jameson said. “A few of them are right outside. They’re in the summer production, too.”
“Was Angelica close to any of them?”
Jameson smiled thinly, and Frank caught the leer again.
“Well, what do you mean by close?” Jameson asked.
“Whatever you want it to mean.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, Angelica didn’t really associate with the other kids very much.”
“No one at all?”
“Not that I ever saw,” Jameson said. “She was quite aloof, that one. Most of the kids thought she was sort of snobby.”
“So she had no friends at all here at Northfield?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How about acquaintances, people she hung out with in the hall?”
Jameson shook his head.
“Are you telling me that she was entirely isolated at the school?”
“She seemed that way.”
“From both the girls and the boys?”
“Come on,” Jameson said, “you’re not really looking for a girl friend. You’re looking for the guy who knocked her up.”
“I’m looking for anyone who might have known her in a personal way.”
“Personal?” Jameson laughed. “Right, personal.” He shrugged. “Well, as far as I could ever tell, she was alone.”
“Even from the cast of the play?”
“Even from them.”
Frank wrote it down. “Why do you think she was isolated?”
“Because she wanted to be,” Jameson said, with a slight, resentful edge in his voice. “She thought she was better than everybody else.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Jameson asked, as if the answer could hardly be more obvious. “Have you ever seen a picture of Angelica?”
“The one in the yearbook.”
Jameson shook his head. “That stupid picture doesn’t even begin to suggest how beautiful that girl was.” He looked at Frank as if he were an innocent. “She had a quality, a way of walking, something like that, and it made people take notice, let me tell you.”
“What kind of notice?”
“Come on, you know what I’m talking about.”
Frank said nothing.
“Sex, man,” Jameson said. “She gave off this incredible sexual thing. It was a wave of heat coming right off her body.” He stopped, as if sensing that same heat in the air around. “Everybody wanted her.”
“Did you?” Frank asked bluntly.
Jameson’s eyes squeezed together. “That’s none of your business.”
Frank looked at him intently. He could see something crumbling behind his eyes. “Everything about Angelica Devereaux is my business,” he said.
“Look, if you’re after horny stories, why don’t you go over to the boy’s locker room?”
Frank said nothing. He could see Jameson’s agitation building steadily, and he waited for it to crest in a wave of sudden truth.
“Don’t you think they talked about her, those boys?” Jameson said. “Don’t you think they dreamed about her?”
Frank continued to watch him closely, his pencil held motionless above the page.
“Oh, you can bet they talked about Angelica,” Jameson sputtered. “And you can bet Angelica knew the things they said.”
Frank still said nothing. He kept his eyes steadily on Jameson’s face.
“It was like a spotlight was always on her,” Jameson went on. “And she wanted that light. She knew what it was. She knew everyone turned around when she came into a room. She knew what they whispered when she walked by them.” He nodded frantically. “Oh, she knew, all right, and she loved it.” He stopped suddenly, and his lips squeezed together tightly, as if in a desperate effort to hold something back. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, then wiped a line of sweat from his upper lip. “That kind of beauty,” he said quietly, at last, “it can fuck you up.”
“You, or her?” Frank asked pointedly.
Jameson’s eyes flashed toward him. “Look, I didn’t fuck that girl. What happened between us, it was nothing.”
“What was it, exactly?”
“This is in confidence, right?” Jameson asked cautiously.
“If it doesn’t pertain to her murder,” Frank said.
Jameson’s eyes narrowed. “Murder? I thought the cops weren’t sure about how she died.”
“I’m sure.”
Jameson’s eyes darted about nervously. “Well, I can tell you that I didn’t have anything to do with a murder.”
“Just tell me about you and Angelica,” Frank said.
“It’s got to be between you and me,” Jameson insisted.
Frank glared at him icily. “If you withhold one thing from me,” he said, “it’s obstruction of justice, and I’ll nail you for it.”
Jameson sucked in a quiet, desperate breath. He seemed to think about it all for a moment, calculate what was to be gained or lost. “All right,” he said finally. “It’s not what you think. I mean, I really didn’t fuck her. I didn’t knock her up, you understand.”
Frank lowered the pencil to the page.
“We were working late one night,” Jameson began. “We were up here on the stage. Everyone else was gone. I don’t know why Angelica decided to hang around that night. She was usually the first one out of here.” He drew in a long breath, then let it out slowly. “Anyway, she hung around for a while, so we started to run lines together. She was standing right next to me. She was so beautiful. Unbearable.” He glanced toward Frank, as if for sympathy. “You know what I mean?”
“She was seventeen,” Frank said.
“But worldly,” Jameson said quickly. “I mean, she knew what she had. She knew what people wanted. I mean, she gave it to somebody, right?” He shrugged. “Well, the fact is, I had a weak moment.”
Frank said nothing. He suspected that Jameson’s life had been made up of a long string of weak moments.
